Mahoney's
testimony highlighted the overwhelming number of local journalists "who are
targeted and censored, whether with violence or intimidation or by the use of
laws meant to punish and silence critical information." He also referred to
CPJ's work in documenting journalist attacks, imprisonments, and murder around
the world.

The
hearing included testimonies by Michael Posner, U.S. Assistant Secretary for
the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, the
Washington Bureau Chief of Russian Television International, among other
witnesses. The commission was founded to inform, advocate, and develop U.S.
congressional strategies that recognized the human rights values stated in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Below
is Mahoney's full testimony, which can also be viewed on the commission's page:

Testimony before
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Hearing

Worldwide
threats to media freedom

By Robert Mahoney

Deputy Director

Committee to Protect Journalists

It
is a dangerous time to be a journalist. Over
the past five years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has seen an
unprecedented diversification in the range of attacks and challenges faced by
journalists in many countries around the world. Violence and repression have
morphed into impunity and exile. Meanwhile, sophisticated online censorship
tactics are coupled with punitive laws that suppress the reporting and
dissemination of news and fact-based commentary.

An unwelcome development in the past year is the surge of press
freedom violations and attacks on journalists covering conflict and political
unrest. CPJ has documented this phenomenon particularly in the Middle East and
North Africa. Libya was among the deadliest places for journalists in 2011. CPJ
research shows that
at least 16 journalists have been killed since November 2011 while covering the
Syrian conflict, at least nine in circumstances that raise questions about government
culpability. More than half of those killed are citizen journalists, who
play a key role in covering the conflict and whose footage is used by
international news organizations.

As clearly shown in the case of Syria, the use of
technology, which has been transforming the ways that information is gathered
and disseminated, means journalism itself is changing, giving more people the
ability to participate. Consequently,
CPJ has also seen that many of the journalists under attack are freelancers and
online journalists, who are responsible for their own preparation, equipment,
and safety. Anti-state charges
and "terrorist" labels have become commonplace and are used to intimidate,
detain, and imprison journalists. Media blackouts and limited access to war and
conflict zones have become routine, along with the uninvestigated killings of
journalists.

Regardless of the medium or circumstance, one thing
is certain: It is overwhelmingly local journalists working on local stories who
are targeted and censored, whether with violence or intimidation or by the use
of laws meant to punish and silence critical information.

Since
1981, it has been our mandate to take action when journalists are censored,
harassed, threatened, jailed, kidnapped, or killed for their work, without
regard to political ideology. In doing so, we document cases, publish in-depth
reports, conduct high-level advocacy, and provide individual moral and material
support. CPJ's work is based on its research, characterized primarily by the
following areas, which provide a global snapshot of obstructions to a free
press worldwide.

Killings

On
average, more than 30 journalists are murdered every year, and the murderers
go unpunished in nearly nine of 10 cases. Among the countries leading in
journalist killings that evade justice are established democracies where the
rule of law should function yet a culture of impunity prevails. The absence of
justice in journalist murders deters the rest of the press from critical
reporting and leaves the public with a shallow understanding of their world.
Journalists reporting on corruption, organized crime, conflict, and politics
are the most targeted for exposing vital truths.

The
reality is that the combat/crossfire casualties have long been a relatively
small subset of all journalists killed (about 1 in 6 cases). The leading
causing of death is targeted murder.

These
murders do not take place in a vacuum. They occur in societies experiencing war
and conflict, although many of them--like Russia, Colombia, and the
Philippines--have democratic forms of government.

The
generalized violence and the breakdown of law and order provide the backdrop
for criminal, militant, sectarian, and paramilitary forces to carry out these
killings. Most journalists killed in conflict zones are not covering war--they
are local journalists covering local issues like human rights and corruption.
In about a third of the cases, according to CPJ research, government links are
suspected, thus reinforcing the cycle of impunity.

Imprisonment

In
2011, the number of journalists imprisoned for their work reached a 15-year
peak. Their continued imprisonment sends the same silencing message as the
murder of journalists. CPJ research points to a general trend: Where
journalists are being silenced through imprisonment, they are often not being
assassinated, but the result is the same--the perpetuation of fear leading to
self-censorship or to exile, particularly in countries where it is clear that
the rule of law barely exists.

Despite
the release of 70 journalists with CPJ assistance in 2011, our research shows
that the number of journalists in jail has remained persistently high. To put
it starkly, 81 journalists were in jail around the world at the end of 2000. By
the end of 2001,
that number shot up to 118. Today, there are 179, most held on state security
charges. Abusive use of national security was the single greatest charge
invoked to justify journalist imprisonments in 2011, followed by violation of
censorship rules. The vast majority of
those jailed were local journalists held by their own governments. Sixty-five
journalists, or over a third of those included in the CPJ census, were being
held without any publicly disclosed charge.

Iran, consistently among the world's leading jailers
of journalists, maintains a revolving prison door with furloughs and new
arrests; subjects prisoners to inhumane treatment; and targets their legal
counsel. A relentless crackdown on the press has led 68 journalists to flee
Iran since 2009, CPJ research shows.

Exiled

Journalists
facing imprisonment and other threats for their work are being forced into
exile worldwide, with more than 450 fleeing their countries in the past five
years, CPJ research shows.

In
the past year, more than a quarter of the 57 journalists who fled their homes
came from East Africa, reinforcing a trend from previous years, CPJ research
shows. This has resulted in a journalist refugee crisis in East Africa that has
drastically affected the region's ability to maintain media institutions that
provide reliable, vital information. After enduring violence and threats, these
journalists fled abroad, only to land in a state of prolonged uncertainty as
governments and the U.N. refugee agency process their cases.

During
the past five years, the greatest number of journalists fled violence in
Somalia, where six journalists have been killed
in 2012 and no journalist murders
have been prosecuted since 1992. Eritrea and Ethiopia, East Africa's worst jailers of journalists,
also lost many to exile. Journalists also sought refuge from targeted attacks
and threats in conflict-ridden Syria and Pakistan.

CPJ's
annual survey of journalists in exile counts those who fled due to work-related
persecution in the past 12 months and provides an overview of the past five
years. Dozens of journalists seeking asylum without the legal right to work nor
access to basic services live in desperate, insecure, and impoverished
conditions, CPJ research shows.

Online Censorship & Surveillance

As
journalists increasingly use social media to report breaking news and the
number of people with Internet access explodes worldwide, governments are
employing sophisticated new tactics to suppress information, according to CPJ's
2011 special report "The
10 Tools of Online Oppressors."

CPJ's
assessment of the prevailing strategies for online oppression and the leading
countries utilizing such tactics shows that traditional mechanisms of
repression have evolved into pervasive digital censorship. The tools utilized
include state-supported emails designed to take over journalists' personal
computers in China, the shutting down of anti-censorship technology in Iran,
monopolistic control of the Net in Ethiopia, as well as synchronized
cyberattacks in Belarus.

The
techniques go well beyond Web censorship. The Internet is being used to spy on
writers and sabotage independent news sites where press freedom is most
threatened. The aim is not only to censor but also to block or disrupt the
reporting process and the dissemination of news and information.

The
digital offensive is often coupled with physical intimidation of online
journalists. Recent developments in
Honduras, Russia, and Turkey, which we shall focus on below, demonstrate the
broad range of repression, coerced censorship, impunity, and outright violence
faced by journalists today.

Honduras

The
Honduran press continues to suffer from the violent fallout of the 2009 coup
that ousted President
Manuel Zelaya. Due to political and drug-related violence as well as widespread
impunity, Honduras, a nation of 7.5 million people, is one of the most
dangerous countries in the region for journalists, CPJ research shows. It is
also important to note that Honduras is one of the world's most violent
countries. A 2011 United Nations report found that it has the world's highest per
capita homicide rate, with 82.1 murders per every 100,000 inhabitants.

At
least 14 journalists have been killed since President Porfirio Lobo took office
in January 2010.
The systematic failure of Honduran authorities to investigate these crimes has
frustrated any attempt to solve the murders, CPJ said in a letter sent to
President Lobo in December 2011.

A
2010 CPJ special report, "Journalist murders spotlight Honduran government
failures," found that the government has been slow and negligent in pursuing
journalists' killers. As a result, many journalists fear the murders have been
conducted with the tacit approval, or even outright complicity, of police,
armed forces, or other authorities.

The
climate is so intimidating that reporters told CPJ that they don't dare probe
deeply into crucial issues like drug trafficking or government corruption. Many
print reporters have removed their bylines from their stories. Tiempo, a San Pedro Sula-based daily
newspaper that consistently criticizes the government, has shut down its
investigative unit due to safety concerns. Some reporters claim the only safe
way to tell the truth about Honduras is to write a novel.

Besides
damaging the country's democracy, the June 2009 military-backed coup that
ousted leftist former President Zelaya fractured the national press corps into
opposing camps. Journalists
in favor of the coup or who work for media outlets that supported Zelaya's
ouster are known in Spanish as "golpistas" or "coup-backers," while those who
opposed it have been pigeon-holed as "resistencia," or part of the political
resistance. Local journalists state that when "resistance"
journalists are attacked or killed, the news receives scant attention or
comment from pro-coup media--which includes most of the country's major
television, radio, and print outlets.

By
contrast, the May 15 killing of Ángel Alfredo Villatoro, a prominent radio host
and close friend of President Lobo, was headline news for days.

If
the Honduran government is to be treated as a responsible international
partner, it must move immediately and aggressively to correct these failures.
It must assign disinterested and trained investigators to these cases; investigations
must be transparent and free of conflicts of interest.

President
Lobo and top officials in his government must begin to speak out, in a forceful
and timely way, against anti-press violence. His government must respect its
obligations to the Organization
of American States and enforce orders of protection for journalists.

The
international community must demand that the Honduran government immediately undertake
these meaningful, measurable, and lasting steps.

Hit
men lay in wait at the home of Palacios, 34, a well-known anchor for Channel 5,
the main TV station in the Tocoa area, according to news reports and CPJ
interviews. Palacios arrived at about 10 p.m. with a cousin in the backseat of
a double cabin 4-by-4 pickup, and his girlfriend, a doctor, in the passenger
seat. Neighbors told local reporters that a few shots were initially fired, apparently
by a lookout, followed by a fusillade of gunfire as other assailants joined in.
Palacios died at the scene. Dr. Yorleny Sánchez, badly injured, died two weeks
later. Palacios' cousin was not injured, local press reports said.

Several
work-related motives emerged in a July 2010 CPJ investigation. Palacios had
opposed the 2009 military-backed coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, and
he had turned the TV station into an openly opposition channel, his colleagues
said. Military personnel appeared at his house and detained him and his family
for several hours in June 2009. That episode, along with other threats from the
military, was strong enough that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
issued an order to the government of Honduras to protect Palacios. According to
the commission, it was one of more than 400 such orders issued for journalists
and activists in Honduras in 2009 and 2010.

The
Honduran government was required by an international treaty to follow the
directives, but it appeared to have ignored most of them. The government
asserted that it never received an order in the Palacios case, although the
Inter-American Commission noted that it had a signed receipt from the Honduran
Supreme Court.

In
the months before his slaying, Palacios campaigned on behalf of a group of
several thousand peasants who had been demanding vast tracts of land they said
rightfully belonged to them. They claimed that a few large landowners, in
violation of agrarian reform laws, had greatly underpaid them for land many
years earlier. Some of the land was retaken by the peasants--simply stolen, according
to the landowners--and there were occasional armed encounters. Peasant activists
said some of their leaders had been abducted and disappeared, or singled out
and killed.

Aside
from the wide belief that Palacios' killing was politically inspired, some CPJ
sources said he could have angered a local drug gang with a recent news story
about a cartel-linked kidnapping. Sources also said that Palacios, like other
Tocoa journalists, had been accused of extorting money from sources. Palacios'
father, José Heriberto Palacios, denied that his son could have been dishonest.
"They killed him because he was honest and was not corrupt," he told CPJ.

The
case was marked by a series of investigative failures. Almost three months
after Palacios was gunned down, a team of investigators came to his grave in
his hometown of Rigores, dug up his body, and at the graveside, in the open,
conducted an autopsy. The coroner never examined the body after the murder; it
had gone straight from the murder scene to the funeral home.

Investigators
also started asking news photographers if they had any pictures of the crime
scene because police had no photographs of their own. The prosecutor in charge
of the case, Arody Reyes, conceded to CPJ that although the gunmen had lain in
wait for hours at Palacios' house, police had not been able to retrieve any
evidence from the scene.

Reyes
said the exhumation and autopsy were suddenly important because the Honduran government
had enlisted the help of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Local investigators,
Reyes said, needed to show their U.S. counterparts something.

Russia

As
Russia enters into a third term of government under President Vladimir Putin, a
convergence of violence, impunity, and constraining legislation severely limits
the space for public debate, dissent, and press freedom in Russia.

Impunity
in attacks on the press remains high in Russia, CPJ research shows. Despite
high-level promises of justice, including by former President Dmitry Medvedev,
Russian investigators have yet to apprehend those responsible for vicious
attacks. A CPJ delegation met with Aleksandr Bastrykin, chairman of Russia's
Investigative Committee (a body responsible for probing serious crimes), to
discuss this record of impunity in September 2010. Most recently, Bastrykin
made headlines for threatening the life of a journalist and subsequently
apologizing. He remains in charge of the country's chief investigative body.

Failure
to prosecute the masterminds perpetuates impunity, even in cases where
significant initial progress is made. The heart of the problem is a lack of
political will and an apparent link between political power and
criminality.

With
16 unsolved murder cases, Russia's rating is stagnant in CPJ's Impunity Index,
a list of countries where journalist's murderers evade justice. The most recent
victim was Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder of the independent Dagestani weekly Chernovik, who was gunned down while leaving
work in December 2011. The newspaper had received frequent threats for its
coverage of government corruption, human rights abuses, and Islamic
radicalism.

Authorities
have made modest progress in some cases: Several suspects have been indicted in
the 2006
killing of Anna Politkovskaya, but authorities have yet to bring the case to
trial or identify the mastermind. "The impunity the masterminds enjoy--this is the
main part of the mechanism, which breeds new murders," said Sergey Sokolov,
deputy editor of Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

Russia's
parliament moved quickly this month to pass a new Internet bill that will
create a blacklist of websites. The law is one in a recent slate of repressive
measures, all rushed through the State Duma, aimed at reining in dissent. The
steps call into question President Putin's commitment to democracy.

A
key pending bill would re-criminalize defamation, while two other ones--just
approved by the parliament's upper house--impose limits and labels on NGOs and
enable the government to block websites. These bills follow the introduction
last month of excessive fines for unauthorized protests.

The
Internet statute Duma Bill 89417 is one of several provisions that would create
a blacklist of websites which all Russians Internet service providers (ISPs)
would have to block and refuse to host. Internet technologists had warned that
436-FZ was too broad, and would require individual comments and home pages to
be marked with age-appropriate ratings in the style of American movies.

The
defamation bill is a step backward for Russia. In November, parliament voted to
decriminalize libel and insult in a move widely perceived as part of
then-President Dmitry Medvedev's liberalization policies. According to the
independent news agency Regnum, the new bill allows for imprisonment of up to
five years, and a fine for moral damages up to 500,000 rubles (US$15,300) for
those found guilty of defamation. The restrictive NGO bill requires that organizations
receiving money from international sources carry the label "foreign agents"--a particularly
negative term in a society where the Kremlin sustains and nourishes deep
suspicion of foreigners. At the time of this writing, all three bills were
awaiting President Putin's signature.

To
stem the escalation of media repression and counter impunity, U.S. legislators
should immediately consider an expansion of the "Magnitsky Bill"--which would
place Russians connected with human rights abuses on a blacklist, denying them
U.S. visas and freezing their assets--to include officials implicated in the
murders of journalists.

The
United States and the international community should continue to engage with
Russian leaders on press freedom and hold authorities publicly accountable for
crimes against those who expose misdeeds, as journalists regularly do.

Four
men forced Estemirova, 50, into a white Lada sedan in Grozny, the capital of
Chechnya, as she was leaving her apartment for work, Reuters reported. Witnesses
said the journalist shouted that she was being kidnapped as the car sped from
the scene, according to press reports. Later the same day, her body was found
in the neighboring region of Ingushetia, according to international news
reports. She was shot in the head and the chest; no belongings were reported
missing.

Estemirova
was a frequent contributor to the independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the Caucasus news
website Kavkazsky Uzel. She was also
an advocate for the Moscow-based human rights group Memorial and a consultant
for the New York-based international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW). She
was the fifth Novaya Gazeta
journalist killed since 2000. Estemirova's colleagues told CPJ that her
relentless reporting on human rights violations committed by federal and
regional authorities in Chechnya put her at odds with regional officials.

Three
years after Estemirova was abducted and found murdered, her killers walk free.
The investigation into the July 15, 2009, killing started off on the right track
only to get derailed, her colleagues at Novaya
Gazeta and Memorial told CPJ. At a July 2011 press conference i in Moscow,
they presented the results of their independent investigation, which revealed
numerous apparent flaws in the official inquiry.

At
the time of the murder, Estemirova was investigating the possible involvement
of Chechen police officers in the July 7, 2009, public execution of Rizvan
Albekov in the village of Akhkinchu-Borzoi. She was the first journalist
reporting on the case. The Investigative Committee
initially focused on the story as the likeliest reason Estemirova was murdered,
colleagues said. In their report, "Two Years After the Killing of Natalya
Estemirova: Investigation
on the Wrong Track," Novaya Gazeta,
Memorial, and the International Federation for Human Rights found that lead
investigator Igor Sobol had sought information from the local prosecutor's
office about Albekov's killing and local police abuses.

But
investigators inexplicably stopped pursuing the lead in early 2010. The current
inquiry, the report's authors said, has focused on Alkhazur Bashayev, a rebel
leader whom Chechen authorities say was killed in a 2009 special operation. Bashayev
was allegedly angered by Estemirova's investigation into accusations that he
and other separatists were recruiting young men in a Chechen village. But the
report by Estemirova's colleagues raised dozens of questions about the official
theory.

How
could the car allegedly used to kidnap Estemirova contain no sign of a
struggle? How was the unsophisticated suspect able to falsify the police
identity card that Chechen police claim to have found in the Bashayev home,
along with the murder weapon? What happened to the genetic material collected
from under Estemirova's fingernails that likely contained the DNA of her killers?
The material, the report said, showed that Estemirova struggled with at least
three attackers, one of whom was a woman. But investigators ordered only one
type of DNA testing, which could neither categorically confirm nor disprove the
involvement of Bashayev. In the process of testing, the report's authors said,
the DNA samples were depleted, making further testing nearly impossible. It is
possible, however, to compare the completed test results against other
potential suspects--such as the police officers implicated in the Albekov
execution. Why hasn't this been done?

The
Investigative Committee did not respond in detail to the report, instead
issuing a statement that said the findings "are not based on facts but are
simply the subjective opinion of persons who do not possess the necessary
competence, do not have information, and do not have access to all of the
materials of the criminal case." The Investigative Committee did not
explain what it found concerning the possible link to Estemirova's reporting on
the extrajudicial killing of Chechen resident Albekov. The committee did not
respond to CPJ's written request for comment on the Estemirova investigation.
In July, CPJ learned through a source at the Investigative Committee that the
Estemirova case was being transferred from lead investigator Igor Sobol--who had
been in charge of the probe since the beginning--to another, yet to be named, investigator,
due to Sobol's "heavy workload." In Russia's context, this translates into
burying the case for good.

Turkey

A
critical journalist in Turkey these days needs a lawyer on standby. The press
is laboring under a creaking judicial system and a panoply of antiquated and
vague legislation that officials and politicians of every stripe find
irresistible as a weapon against muckraking reporters and critical commentators.

The
extent of journalist imprisonments has been disputed by the Turkish government,
which asserts that independent assessments have been exaggerated. CPJ is currently carrying out exhaustive
research on individual cases, legislation, and online censorship, all of which
are choking press freedom in Turkey. Our research thus far indicates that there
are dozens of journalists imprisoned in direct relation to their work. A report
with our findings and assessment will be published in the fall of 2012.

After
several years of legal and constitutional reform prompted by Turkey's
application for European
Union membership, moves to lighten the dead hand of the law on journalists are running
out of steam. The United States seems wary of calling out Turkey on its human
rights and press freedom record. Turkey, a NATO member and crucial U.S. ally in
the region, is a progressive, secular democracy and a model of free speech compared
with its neighbors Iran, Iraq, and Syria. But for journalists, particularly
Kurdish and leftist ones, progress in freedom of expression has not kept pace
with political and economic advances.

Journalists
and press groups estimate there were up to 5,000 criminal cases open against reporters
at the end of 2011. The cases involve charges such as criminal defamation,
influencing the outcome of a trial, and spreading terrorist propaganda. The
bulk of these cases have not resulted in convictions historically, but the
endless court proceedings and legal costs have had a severe chilling effect,
according to reporters, media analysts, and lawyers interviewed by CPJ throughout
2011. Prosecutions have intensified since authorities in 2007 first detailed
the "Ergenekon" conspiracy, an alleged ultra-nationalist military
plot to overthrow the government.

Emblematic
Turkey Case

AHMET ŞIK
Freelance
Imprisoned:
March 2011-March 2012

Şık,
a prominent reporter who had written for the dailies Cumhuriyet and Radikal
and the weekly Nokta, was charged with aiding the
Ergenekon conspiracy, an alleged nationalist military plot to overthrow the
government.

Şık,
co-author of a 2010 book on Ergenekon, had been known throughout his career for
his critical writings about the "deep state," the purported secular, nationalist
forces operating within the army, security agencies, and government ministries.
Before being arrested, Şık was writing a new book with the working title, The Imam's Army, which was to allege the
existence of a shadowy organization operating within police and other government
agencies and said to be populated by members of the Sufi Muslim religious
community known as Fettullah Gülen.

A
draft of the new book was deleted from the computers of his publishing house
and that of a colleague during police raids, Hürriyet Daily News reported. The interrogations of Şık focused almost
exclusively on the unfinished book, according to the paper. The government's
indictment, which appeared months after the arrest, focused on Şık's journalistic
activities, especially in regard to the book, the local press freedom group Bia
said.

"Criticizing
the government and drawing attention to the dangerous network of people in the police
and judiciary who are members of the Gülen community is enough in today's
Turkey to become an Ergenekon suspect," Şık told CPJ. Amid international
outcry, authorities granted temporary release to Şık in March 2012. However,
the charges against him remain and he can be rearrested upon conviction.

In
a disturbing development, Special Authority Public Chief Prosecutor Muammer
Akkaş launched a new investigation against Şık shortly after his release. The
new investigation accused Şık
of allegedly "threatening and identifying judges and prosecutors as
targets for terror organizations" in his statement to journalists upon his
release from prison, the independent news portal Bianet reported. Şık had told
the press that day: "Incomplete justice is not going to bring justice and
democracy. About 100 journalists are still in prison. The police officers,
prosecutors, and judges who plotted and carried out this complot will go to prison.
Justice will come when they enter this prison," according to news reports.

In
July, an Istanbul prosecutor demanded that Şık serve up to seven years in
prison for "insulting" and "threatening" state officials, the Dogan News Agency
reported.